Favorite Quotes

Trust, but verify.
— Ronald Reagan

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
— Aldous Huxley

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
— Marcus Aurelius

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
— Ronald Reagan

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
— attributed to Edsger Dijkstra

As a result of the fact that education has been tax-supported for such a long time, most people find it difficult to project an alternative. Yet there is nothing unique about education that distinguishes it from the many other human needs which are filled by private enterprise. If, for many years, the government had undertaken to provide all the citizens with shoes, and if someone were subsequently to propose that this field should be turned over to private enterprise, he would doubtless be told indignantly: What! Do you want everyone except the rich to walk around barefoot? But the shoe industry is doing its job with immeasurably greater competence than public education is doing its job.
— Nathanial Branden

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
— Ivan Turgenev

Perfect is the enemy of good.
— Mark Rippetoe

Whenever a programmer thinks, ‘Hey, skins, what a cool idea’, their computer’s speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls.
— Matt Robinson, in Jamie Zawinski’s LiveJournal blog

It’s odd. People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You’d think that would also be obvious.
— Larry Wall, 2nd State of the Onion

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
— Albert Einstein

“The reason that libertarians seem extreme and odd is not that they are a furious minority, angry at a world that seems to have passed them by, but rather the opposite. They are heirs to a tradition that has changed the world. Consider what classical liberalism stood for in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was against the power of the church and for the power of the market; it was against the privileges of kings and aristocracies and for dignity of the middle class; it was against a society dominated by status and land and in favor of one based on markets and merit; it was opposed to religion and custom and in favor of science and secularism; it was for national self-determination and against empires; it was for freedom of speech and against censorship; it was for free trade and against mercantilism. Above all, it was for the rights of the individual and against the power of the church and the state….

The reason that libertarianism seems narrow and naive is that having won 80 percent of the struggles it has fought over the last two centuries, it is now forced to define itself wholly in terms of the last 20 percent. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice if you were in Prussia in the 1850s, but in America in the 1960s? Libertarianism has become extreme because the world has left it no recourse.”
— Fareed Zakaria

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
— Isaac Asimov

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
— Hermann Goering, interviewed by US Intelligence Officer Gustave Gilbert, during the Nuremberg trials

It is like some members of society missed the entire concept of humility, grace and emotional intelligence. I’m always momentarily stunned by the outright screams for not only attention, but for immediate and genuine empathy and sympathy from people incapable of operating without being the center of drama. The downfall of man will be LiveJournaled.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
— Tyler Durden in “Fight Club”

What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
— James Downey, “Billy Madison”